Occupiers without a place to occupy. What do they do? Where do they go?

By Bob Burnett2011: The Year Corporations Attacked Democracy[4]
For eighty years, Americans have feared robots, worrying they might one day rule the world. In 2011 we realized our real enemies are not robots, but multinational corporations, who have declared war on democracy.

What Jim and Ken’s monumental efforts really exposed- the devastating final analysis- is how easy it is to corrupt our entire system with just a few well-placed criminals stationed as sentinels against justice at every level of our system.This is one of the greatest conspiracy stories of our time, and still very hard for most Americans to stomach. But we’ve got to keep telling the truth. It’s more important now than ever.

By Stephen LendmanObama Approves Draconian Police State Law[6]
Obama supports draconian FY 2012 National Defense Authorization Act provisions. Justification given is national security and war on terror hokum.

As the Occupy Wall Street movement continues to protest record levels of wealth and income inequality, we turn to an author who says the U.S. economy might be becoming more democratic. Gar Alperovitz argues in an op-ed in today’s New York Times that we may be in the midst of a profound transition toward an economy characterized by more democratic structures of ownership. Alperovitz finds that 130 million Americans are members of some kind of cooperative, and 13 million Americans work in an employee-owned company. He says the United States may be heading toward something very different from both corporate-dominated capitalism and from traditional socialism. “I think we’re seeing a change in attitude, both increasing doubts about what’s now going on in the economy, deep doubts, very deep doubts–thanks to Occupation, it’s crystallized–but this other trend of saying, ‘What do you want?

It’s now been exactly 24 days since Boiling Frogs reported on the ongoing joint US-NATO secret training camp in the US Air Force base in Incirlik, Turkey. Despite the US media blackout, every newspaper in Turkey covered the story of the BBC reporter who was detained and prevented from covering the US-NATO-Syrian operations.

By Ralph NaderCongressional Tyranny, White House Surrender[9]
President Obama initially threatened to veto the entire bill and make Congress drop these pernicious dictates that so insult the memory and vision of our founding fathers. He is already signaling that he doesn’t have the backbone to reject the false choice “between our safety and our ideals,” that he asserted in his Inaugural Address.

By Brett Redmayne-Titley“Hollow” Victory in Iraq: The American Empire Takes Another Beating.[10]
Today’s announcement of an American “Victory” in Iraq uses the same flawed definition that was, then, attached to America’s 1973 demise in Vietnam. Again, this hollow word will be used to turn defeat in Iraq, and ultimately in Afghanistan, into another questionable retreat called victory.

There’s hope in the Occupy protest that is so big and so deeply felt by so many angry/hopeful people that even such forces of autocracy as Mayor Mike Bloomberg cannot make it go away. You’ve probably seen this bumper sticker: “If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention.” I find that the thing we Americans have the most of is the very thing our failed leaders have the least of: bigness of spirit.

Apparently the desperate search of Republicans for someone they can nominate not named Willard M. Romney continues. New polls suggest that in Iowa, at least, we have already passed peak Gingrich. Next up: Representative Ron Paul.

Christopher Hitchens, a sharp-witted provocateur who used his formidable learning, biting wit and muscular prose style to skewer what he considered high-placed hypocrites, craven lackeys of the right and left, “Islamic fascists” and religious faith of any kind, died Thursday “from pneumonia, a complication of esophageal cancer,” according to Vanity Fair, the magazine for which Mr. Hitchens worked. He was 62.

With President Obama read to sign away the freedoms of Americans by inking his name to the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012, opponents are already going after the lawmakers that made the legislation possible. On Wednesday, Internet hacktivists gathered on the Web to find a way to take on the lawmakers, who have allowed for this detrimental legislation to make it all the way to the Oval Office desk. Upon discussion of routes to take to show their opposition to the overwhelming number of politicians who voted in favor of NDAA, Anonymous members agreed to begin with Senator Robert J Portman, a Republican lawmaker from the state of Ohio.

Federal imprisonment for unpaid debt has been illegal in the U.S. since 1833. It’s a practice people associate more with the age of Dickens than modern-day America. But as more Americans struggle to pay their bills in the wake of the recession, collection agencies are using harsher methods to get their money, ushering in the return of debtor’s prisons.

It’s now been exactly 24 days since I reportedon the ongoing joint US-NATO secret training camp in the USAir Force base in Incirlik, Turkey, which began operations in April- May 2011 to organize and expand the dissident base in Syria. I broke that story on November 21, here at Boiling Frogs Post, based on information provided to me by multiple sources including highly credible insiders in Turkey and government insiders here in the US. 18 days later Iranian Press TV ran the story with further confirmation based on intensive coverage and confirmation by the Turkish media. Impressively, despite far more serious pressure from the government, reporters in Turkey provided detailed coverage of the story I broke here in the US.

Results from a new national survey from the Pew Research Center should strike fear into the hearts of incumbents in Congress, especially those who are members of the Republican Party. A record number of respondents want to vote sitting lawmakers out of office, and Republicans take more of the blame than Democrats for perceptions of a do-nothing Congress.

This is a detailed analysis of the talk radio market in Sacramento, which launched Rush Limbaugh. It shows that Clear Channel stacks the deck in favor of hard right talk radio, and deconstructs Conservatives’ arguments that progressive radio gets no ratings.

There’s a farmer out there in America who most people have probably never heard of, but who is single-handedly changing the world. His name is Joel Salatin — a self-described Christian, libertarian, environmentalist, lunatic farmer from the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.

Neoconservatives are livid over President Obama’s declaration that the Iraq War is over, fearing that its disastrous outcome will undercut plans for a new war with Iran. But Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich says, if elected, he stands ready to join Israel in invading Iran

Occupy Wall Street protesters appealed to the broader U.S. population — and even the police — as fellow members of the 99 percent, but Phil Rockstroh observes that many Americans still fear breaking with the oppressive status quo and most police will follow orders in harsh crackdowns. Or as Bob Dylan presents the case in verse: “Because the cops don’t need you and man they expect the same”–Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blue.

By Mark SashineHere We, The People, Are[28]
Aren’t we all, parents of our kids, just deliberately dumb? If the answer is yes that means we had sold our children for the false sense of security, that means we are cowards and deserve what’s coming.

As President Obama has extolled the virtues of the people’s uprisings in the Arab Spring he has also continued to authorize the Pentagon to train the security forces w/in these autocracies to crush the protest demonstrations. This reeks of sheer hypocrisy particularly coming from the lips of Mr. “change you can believe in”.

There can be no doubt that America is going to Hell in a hand basket. I would rather be a Friend of the Devil than any of those sanctimonious bastards in the GOP who have done nothing while one third of our nation has fallen into poverty, myself included.

What’s alarming is the ease with which an otherwise deadlocked Congress that can’t manage minimal funding for job creation and unemployment relief can find the money to fund at Cold War levels a massive sophisticated arsenal to defeat an enemy that no longer exists.

At the new offices of the Syrian National Council, a self-styled transitional government-in-exile that unites leftists, Islamists and members of other factions among the Syrian opposition, boxes of supplies still need to be unpacked and the smell of new office furniture lingers. It is from these offices, inside a building more accustomed to hosting import/export businesses, where representatives of the popular uprising in Syria plan to work toward greater legitimacy and international recognition.

On 30 September 2011, at a site 140 kilometres east of Sana’a, the capital of Yemen, Anwar al-Aulaqi an American born dual citizen, was killed by a barrage of missiles fired from an unmanned aerial vehicle – a drone – into his car. Al-Aulaqi was not distinguished, only notorious. He was a Muslin cleric, a mid-level religious functionary who happened to speak English well. This made him a propaganda threat, but not one whose elimination would do anything to limit the reach of al-Qaeda. Only American propaganda had succeeded in making him a larger-than-life figure.

Switzerland has officially charged three Swiss citizens with assisting the nuclear smuggling network of Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan’s nuclear program, who gave nuclear information to North Korea, Libya and Iran. But the scope of the trial will be severely limited under a peculiar plea bargain struck with the three defendants, which will prevent the court from examining their claims of having worked as agents of the United States Central Intelligence Agency.

December 16 is a day of tragic memory when Pakistan was dismembered and a new state of Bangladesh was created in 1971 as part of Indian plot which still continues. At present, New Delhi has been supporting separatism in Balochistan, Sindh, and insurgency in various regions in order to further weaken the federation of Pakistan.

Are US Troops Deploying on the Jordan-Syrian Border?[41]
According to first-hand accounts and reports provided to Boiling Frogs Post by several sources in Jordan, during the last few hours foreign military groups, estimated at hundreds of individuals, began to spread near the villages of the north-Jordan city of “Al-Mafraq”, which is adjacent to the Jordanian and Syrian border. According to one Jordanian military officer who asked to remain anonymous, hundreds of soldiers who speak languages ?other than Arabic were seen during the past two days in those areas moving back and forth in military vehicles between the King Hussein Air Base of al-Mafraq (10 km from the Syrian border), and the vicinity of Jordanian villages adjacent to the Syrian border, such as village Albaej (5 km from the border), the area around the dam of Sarhan, the villages of Zubaydiah and al-Nahdah adjacent to the Syrian border.

Since the 99 Percent Movement protests began across the country, multiple Republican lawmakers and strategists have announced their fear of what they claim are the movement’s attacks on capitalism and America’s free market economy. The protests and Democratic policies, some Republicans have claimed, represent a form of class warfare against the rich. And many have predicted that supporting the movement will come back to haunt Democrats. But a new poll from the Pew Research Center found that when asked directly about the belief that sparked the 99 Percent Movement — that the rich have too much power and influence in this country — Americans of all political stripes largely agree. Wide majorities of Democrats, independents, and even Republicans, in fact, think the rich are too powerful, and a majority also thinks our economic system unfairly favors the wealthy…

According to a new survey by the corporate governance group GMI Ratings, “America’s top bosses enjoyed pay hikes of between 27 and 40% last year.” The top ten CEOs in the country took home a combined $770 million. Meanwhile, workers saw their average wage go up just two percent in the same year.

Fairewinds’ chief engineer Arnie Gundersen discusses whether the accidents at Fukushima were a meltdown, a melt-through, or a China Syndrome. Whatever the accidents are named, thousands of tons of water contaminated with plutonium, uranium, and other very toxic radioactive isotopes are flooding the site, the surrounding water table, and the ocean.

Squeezed by rising living costs, a record number of Americans — nearly 1 in 2 — have fallen into poverty or are scraping by on earnings that classify them as low income. The latest census data depict a middle class that’s shrinking as unemployment stays high and the government’s safety net frays. The new numbers follow years of stagnating wages for the middle class that have hurt millions of workers and families.

This morning’s New York Times contains a jolting piece by a Times reporter who apparently found classified documents that include interviews conducted by officers investigating a 2005 massacre of Iraqi civilians by U.S. Marines. The documents were found in a Baghdad junkyard that specializes in trailers and office supplies left over from American military base closings. The interviews of the Marines involved in the massacre at Haditha offer first-hand accounts of the scope of atrocities committed by U.S. military personnel against Iraqi civilians during the U.S. occupation. In 2008, Nation Books published Collateral Damage: America’s War on Iraqi Civilians, the result of a two-year investigation into the slaughter of innocent civilians that resulted from the American military presence in Iraq.

United Wisconsin, the coalition spearheading the movement to recall Gov. Scott Walker (R), announced today that volunteers have collected more than 500,000 signatures on petitions to put the recall on the ballot. Working families need 540,000 signatures by Jan, 17, but are aiming to gather another 250,000 to offset expected dirty tricks and challenges from Walker’s supporters. This Saturday, volunteers across the state are holding a massive petition drive to collect recall signatures.

The easiest way to understand Europe’s financial crisis is to look at the solutions being proposed to resolve it. They are a banker’s dream, a grab bag of giveaways that few voters would be likely to approve in a democratic referendum. Bank strategists learned not to risk submitting their plans to democratic vote after Icelanders twice refused in 2010-11 to approve their government’s capitulation to pay Britain and the Netherlands for losses run up by badly regulated Icelandic banks operating abroad. Lacking such a referendum, mass demonstrations were the only way for Greek voters to register their opposition to the ‚¬50 billion in privatization sell-offs demanded by the European Central Bank (ECB) in autumn 2011.

Squeezed by rising living costs, a record number of Americans — nearly 1 in 2 — have fallen into poverty or are scraping by on earnings that classify them as low income. The latest census data depict a middle class that’s shrinking as unemployment stays high and the government’s safety net frays. The new numbers follow years of stagnating wages for the middle class that have hurt millions of workers and families.

The Obama administration expressed concern Thursday over the bipartisan Medicare reform proposal that has been hammered out between Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), saying it believes the plan could weaken the program.

Civil rights groups were outraged by the legislation, and the White House’s decision to drop the veto threat. “As a former constitutional lawyer, the president should know better,” said Raha Wala, advocacy counsel for Human Rights First. “This legislation not only undermines the Constitution, it compromises national security. The president needed to show leadership on this, and he’s failed.”